CES Letter Answers

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KJV Errors in the Book of Mormon ​

The claim:

"What are 1769 King James Version edition errors doing in the Book of Mormon? A purported ancient text? Errors which are unique to the 1769 edition that Joseph Smith owned?"[1]

"When King James translators were translating the KJV Bible between 1604 and 1611, they would occasionally put in their own words into the text to make the English more readable. We know exactly what these words are because they're italicized in the KJV Bible. What are these 17th century italicized words doing in the Book of Mormon? Word for word? What does this say about the Book of Mormon being an ancient record?"[2]

"The Book of Mormon includes mistranslated biblical passages that were later changed in Joseph Smith's translation of the Bible. These Book of Mormon verses should match the inspired JST version instead of the incorrect KJV version that Joseph later fixed."[3]

The CES Letter raises three related claims: that the Book of Mormon reproduces errors unique to the 1769 KJV edition, that it copies KJV italicized words verbatim, and that it contains passages Joseph Smith later corrected in the Joseph Smith Translation (JST). These are presented as evidence that Joseph copied from his family Bible rather than translating an ancient record.

The reality is substantially more complex than the CES Letter acknowledges. The KJV did serve as the linguistic substrate for the Book of Mormon's biblical passages -- and that finding deserves to be acknowledged forthrightly. But the textual evidence cuts in directions the CES Letter does not anticipate: the Book of Mormon modifies its biblical material at roughly a 50% rate, frequently aligns with manuscripts unknown in 1829, contains linguistic features older than the KJV itself, and at one critical moment omits a phrase that aligns with the earliest Greek manuscripts (a reading the modern critical text has since adopted, though textual criticism on the variant is contested). The strongest critical case -- David P. Wright, Colby Townsend, Stan Larson, Grant Hardy -- is far more rigorous than the CES Letter's version, and this article engages it directly.

Context and Background ​

How Much of the Book of Mormon Is Biblical Quotation? ​

Philip Barlow documented that 27 of the Book of Mormon's 239 chapters consist primarily of biblical quotation -- roughly one in nine.[4] Direct quotations (21 chapters of Isaiah, the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew 5-7, Malachi 3-4, and shorter passages) total approximately 16,000-18,000 words out of roughly 270,000 -- about 6-7% of the text.[4:1] Royal Skousen's History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Part Five: The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon (2019) -- the definitive scholarly treatment -- identified 36 direct KJV quotations (passages with 16 or more consecutive matching words) and 83 paraphrastic quotations.[5] B.H. Roberts addressed the objection over 120 years ago, arguing that biblical quotation in the Book of Mormon follows patterns consistent with ancient authors drawing on a shared scriptural tradition.[6]

The KJV language in the Book of Mormon is real and well-documented. The question is not whether it exists, but what it tells us about the translation process.

The Translation Setting ​

Multiple eyewitnesses described Joseph Smith's translation method. Emma Smith testified: "He had neither manuscript nor book to read from."[7] David Whitmer described Joseph placing the seer stone in a hat and reading words that appeared on the stone.[8] The stone-in-hat method makes continuous Bible consultation during dictation impractical -- Joseph's face was pressed into the hat, blocking out extraneous light -- though not strictly impossible.[9]

The Smith family did own a Bible -- as did virtually every American household in the 1820s -- but the physical constraint of the translation process makes it difficult to explain how Joseph could have consulted it during dictation. Skousen's analysis of the original manuscript confirms dictation: misspellings reflect mishearings (phonetic errors), not misreadings of a printed text.[10] "Coriantumr" was initially written "Coriantummer" by Oliver Cowdery -- a phonetic rendering that makes sense for a word heard aloud but not read from a page. Oliver Cowdery purchased a separate Bible on October 8, 1829 -- months after the translation was completed in late June 1829.[11] Skousen's Part Seven: The Early Transmissions of the Text (2024) extends the manuscript-evidence case for dictation through the full transmission history.[12]

The KJV Was the Base Text -- and This Is Expected ​

Skousen confirmed that the KJV served as the starting point for English rendering of biblical passages in the Book of Mormon.[5:1] This finding should be acknowledged forthrightly. But it does not imply plagiarism any more than a modern translator's use of familiar phrasing implies plagiarism. When the Dead Sea Scrolls were translated into English, modern translators deliberately used KJV phrasing for approximately 90% of the text where the ancient manuscripts agreed with the KJV, diverging only where the manuscripts themselves differed.[13] A divine translation directed to a 19th-century audience steeped in KJV language would naturally employ the same principle: use familiar biblical phrasing where the underlying text substantially agreed, and signal genuine variants through divergence.

Skousen further determined that the specific KJV edition reflected in the Book of Mormon dates to the 1670s or later based on substantive textual differences, and to the 1770s or later when italics formatting changes are included. He narrowed the likely source to post-1769 American printings (an edition no earlier than the 1770s, with several American printings of the late 18th and early 19th centuries closer to the Book of Mormon than the 1769 Oxford edition the CES Letter specifies).[5:2]

Further Reading

The single most important scholarly resource on this question is Royal Skousen's The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Part Five: The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon (FARMS / BYU Studies, 2019), with Skousen's own 2020 BYU Studies Quarterly summary as the accessible companion. Skousen's Part Seven: The Early Transmissions of the Text (2024) extends the analysis to the full manuscript-to-print transmission history.

The Translation Framework: KJV Scaffolding Around Ancient Content ​

Most thoughtful Latter-day Saint scholars work with a framework that takes the KJV-as-substrate finding as a prediction rather than an embarrassment. Blake T. Ostler's 1987 Dialogue article articulated the foundational "modern expansion of an ancient source" model: the Book of Mormon contains genuine ancient material expanded and interpreted through Joseph Smith's nineteenth-century context, including KJV language.[14] Brant Gardner extended this with a "functional translation" or "localization" model in The Gift and Power (2011), arguing the divine interface supplied meaning through familiar English forms.[15] Stan Spencer (2020) developed a more specific mechanism: a visioned English text in which a prior translator had already removed KJV italicized words, with Joseph attempting imperfectly to restore them.[16] These models share a common premise: genuine ancient content mediated through 19th-century English scaffolding, with the KJV serving as the linguistic medium.

Under this framework, when Joseph encountered passages substantially overlapping the Isaiah his audience knew, the divine translation supplied that familiar English text. Where the underlying text diverged, the translation diverged. The errors are the cost of using a pre-existing English text. The principle is consistent with how revelation has operated throughout scriptural history: New Testament authors quoted the Septuagint's imperfect Greek renderings of Hebrew originals rather than correcting them; Matthew 1:23 quotes Isaiah 7:14 using parthenos ("virgin") rather than the Hebrew almah ("young woman").[17] D&C 1:24 grounds the principle theologically: revelation is "given unto my servants in their weakness, after the manner of their language."

This framework is the article's working thesis. It involves real concessions -- the Isaiah passages are not fresh translations; the KJV's fingerprints are genuinely there -- but it accommodates the data better than either simple plagiarism or a tight word-by-word translation model. Its concrete testable predictions -- ancient-manuscript alignments the KJV cannot produce, linguistic features older than the KJV, internal consistency resistant to piecemeal revision -- are addressed in the sections that follow.

Analysis ​

The "1769 Edition Errors" Claim Is Factually Inaccurate ​

The CES Letter's foundational claim -- that the Book of Mormon contains errors "unique to the 1769 edition" -- is demonstrably wrong. The translation choices the CES Letter highlights (such as "pleasant pictures" at Isaiah 2:16 or "eloquent orator" at Isaiah 3:3) exist identically in the 1611 KJV.[18] The 1769 revision by Benjamin Blayney primarily standardized spelling and punctuation, updated typesetting, made several hundred minor wording corrections, and extensively revised which words were italicized. It did not introduce new translation errors.[18:1] FAIR states plainly: "there are no errors that are unique to the 1769 edition."[19]

Frontispiece of the 1611 first edition of the King James Bible, engraved by Cornelis Boel, showing the Twelve Apostles, Moses and Aaron flanking the central title text, and the Four Evangelists in the corners with their symbolic animals beneath the Tetragrammaton.
Frontispiece of the 1611 first edition of the King James Bible. The translation choices the CES Letter attributes to the 1769 edition ("pleasant pictures," "eloquent orator") exist identically in this 1611 first printing — and Skousen's analysis narrows the Book of Mormon's actual KJV source to post-1769 American printings, not the 1769 Oxford edition. Image via Wikimedia Commons (public domain).

The CES Letter asserts the claim without demonstrating it. No specific error is shown to exist in the 1769 edition but not in earlier editions. The reader is asked to accept the "unique to 1769" premise on assertion alone.[1:1] Skousen's Part Five analysis goes further: the actual edition reflected in the Book of Mormon is from the 1770s onward -- closer to the post-1769 American printings of the late 18th and early 19th centuries than to the 1769 Oxford edition.[5:3]

This is the weakest element of the CES Letter's argument, but rebutting only this version would be a deflection. The real question is not whether the Book of Mormon contains errors specific to the 1769 edition (it does not) but whether it reproduces KJV translation choices that modern scholars regard as incorrect. That is a more serious question, and it deserves a serious answer.

Categorizing the Alleged "Errors" ​

FAIR's catalog of 91 alleged KJV translation errors reveals a spectrum, not a monolithic block of mistakes.[20] Some are older English meanings rather than translation errors at all; some are legitimate translation variants where the Hebrew is genuinely ambiguous; some are not errors when the alternative manuscript traditions are considered. But a substantial portion -- perhaps a majority of the catalog -- are real cases where the KJV translators got the Hebrew wrong, and the Book of Mormon reproduces those same wrong readings. The real question is not whether genuine mistranslations exist (they do) but what the reproduction tells us about the translation process.

The Genuine Mistranslations: An Honest Assessment ​

Hebrew scholars (Robert Alter's Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, W. W. Norton 2018-19; and other peer-reviewed Hebrew scholarship) rate several passages as significant mistranslations:[21]

PassageKJV ReadingHebrew OriginalModern Scholarly Rendering
Isaiah 2:16 / 2 Nephi 12:16"pleasant pictures"sekiyyot"ships" or "vessels"
Isaiah 3:3 / 2 Nephi 13:3"eloquent orator"nachash lachash"expert in charms"
Isaiah 11:3 / 2 Nephi 21:3"quick understanding"(root involves smelling)"delight in fearing"
Isaiah 13:22 / 2 Nephi 23:22"dragons"tannim"jackals"

These are not defensible alternative readings. They are cases where the KJV got the Hebrew wrong, and the Book of Mormon reproduces those wrong readings. Under the Ostler-Gardner-Spencer framework, the Book of Mormon's Isaiah is not a fresh translation: where the Nephite text substantially overlapped with the KJV, the KJV rendering was used as-is, including its imperfections. The same principle is visible in how New Testament authors quote the Septuagint rather than producing fresh corrections from the Hebrew.[17:1] The mistranslations are real concessions but consistent with how inspired authors have used available translations throughout scriptural history.

The Modification Rate: What Plagiarism Actually Looks Like ​

Multiple scholars have documented the rate at which the Book of Mormon's Isaiah modifies the KJV: Tvedtnes (1984) found 207 of 478 verses (~43%) show variations;[22] Ellertson (2001) found 216 of 433 verses (50%) with 370 total variants;[23] Gibson reports 54% modified.[24] The modification is plainly visible in Grant Hardy's The Annotated Book of Mormon (Oxford University Press, 2023) and his earlier Maxwell Institute Study Edition (2018), both of which use bold formatting to highlight every variation from the KJV in Isaiah passages.[25] [26]

Documented modification rate of KJV Isaiah in the Book of MormonBar chart comparing the rate predicted by a verbatim-copy hypothesis (essentially 0%, rendered as a 3px stub at the axis) against three independent empirical studies of the Book of Mormon's Isaiah: Tvedtnes 1984 at ~43% (207 of 478 verses), Ellertson 2001 at 50% (216 of 433 verses), and Gibson at 54%. The three data bars rise to roughly half the chart height; the verbatim-copy prediction bar is a flat stub at the baseline.A derivative text should not modify its source at 50%10%20%30%40%50%60%~0%(prediction)~43%207 of 478 verses50%216 of 433 verses54%of 433 versesVerbatim-copyhypothesis(if BoM copied KJV)Tvedtnes1984Ellertson2001Gibsonn.d.Percent of Isaiah verses modified from KJV
If the Book of Mormon were simply copying the KJV, the modification rate should be at or near 0%. Three independent studies — Tvedtnes 1984, Ellertson 2001, and Gibson — all measure something between 43% and 54%. A derivative text should not modify its source at half its length.

Further Reading

Grant Hardy's The Annotated Book of Mormon (Oxford UP, 2023) is the premier academic reference; his Maxwell Institute Study Edition (2018) is the accessible parallel.

The bare modification rate does not distinguish between (1) an ancient text rendered through KJV scaffolding, with substantial overlap producing the unmodified portion and divergent ancient material producing the modified portion, and (2) a 19th-century author creatively adapting the KJV. Both models predict a rate in this general range. The distinguishing evidence must come from the nature and pattern of the modifications: do the divergences align with ancient manuscripts the author could not have known? Do they show linguistic features that resist 19th-century explanation? Those are the questions the following sections address.

Dead Sea Scroll Alignments ​

The strongest positive evidence comes from manuscripts Joseph Smith could not have known existed. The Dead Sea Scrolls, discovered in 1947 -- 117 years after the Book of Mormon's publication -- include the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa-a), the oldest near-complete manuscript of Isaiah, dated to roughly 125 BCE. In several cases, the Book of Mormon's departures from the KJV align with these ancient manuscripts rather than with the King James Version.

A column of the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa-a) from Qumran, showing Hebrew text of Isaiah 53 written in carbon-based ink on parchment around 125 BCE.
A typical column of the Great Isaiah Scroll (1QIsa-a), showing the Hebrew text of Isaiah 53. The scroll was copied at Qumran around 125 BCE — roughly 1,700 years before the King James Version and more than 1,900 years before the Book of Mormon's publication — and remained sealed in a cave until its 1947 discovery. Photograph via the Israel Museum, Shrine of the Book (public domain).

Donald W. Parry (a Dead Sea Scrolls translator himself) and Stephen D. Ricks documented five specific passages:[27]

PassageKJV ReadingBook of Mormon ReadingDead Sea Scroll (1QIsa-a)Agreement
Isaiah 3:9 / 2 Nephi 13:9"they hide it not""and they cannot hide it""and they hide it not"BoM and 1QIsa-a both add "and"
Isaiah 9:9 / 2 Nephi 19:9"the inhabitant of Samaria" (singular)"the inhabitants of Samaria" (plural)"the inhabitants of Samaria" (plural)BoM and 1QIsa-a agree on plural
Isaiah 14:32 / 2 Nephi 24:32"the messengers of the nation" (singular)"the messengers of the nations" (plural)"the messengers of the nations" (plural)BoM and 1QIsa-a agree on plural
Isaiah 48:11 / 1 Nephi 20:11"how should my name be polluted?""I will not suffer my name to be polluted""how can I be polluted"Both use first-person verb; also Vulgate, Targum
Isaiah 50:2 / 2 Nephi 7:2"their fish stinketh""their fish to stink because the waters are dried up""their fish dry up"BoM shares "dried up" element with 1QIsa-a

These alignments should be assessed honestly. Individually, most are minor: adding "and," changing singular to plural, slight verb changes. These are the kinds of small variants that arise routinely in manuscript transmission. A person who occasionally tweaked phrasing while adapting the KJV could produce some of these by coincidence. No single example is decisive on its own.[27:1]

But the pattern is what matters. Tvedtnes conducted a broader analysis, examining 234 Isaiah variants and rating each based on ancient manuscript evidence:[22:1]

RatingCount
Favor the Book of Mormon59
Neutral126
Favor the KJV49

The scorecard shows more variants confirmed by ancient evidence in favor of the Book of Mormon than in favor of the KJV. This is the wrong outcome for the simple-plagiarism hypothesis: a derivative text should not be confirmed by ancient manuscripts more often than its source. The margin (59 vs. 49) is modest, however, and Tvedtnes was a faithful Latter-day Saint scholar; the ratings involve subjective judgments about which readings "favor" which text. No non-LDS textual critic has independently replicated his scoring methodology, which is a limitation worth acknowledging.

The 49 cases where the KJV reads better than the Book of Mormon also matter. They include passages where the KJV's reading reflects better Hebrew scholarship than the Book of Mormon's, and they are the kind of evidence Wright and other critics use to argue the Book of Mormon looks like editorial KJV revision rather than independent ancient transmission. The cumulative pattern -- some BoM > KJV cases, some KJV > BoM cases, occasional DSS alignment, heavy KJV pattern preservation -- is what the KJV-scaffolding framework predicts (a translation using KJV phrasing plus ancient material occasionally showing through), but it is also broadly consistent with creative editorial revision of the KJV. The 59-vs-49 margin tilts modestly toward the historicity reading, but tilts modestly. Honest framing of the data requires keeping the unfavorable cases in view, not just the favorable ones.[22:2]

150 Non-Aligned Variants ​

Carol Ellertson applied Emanuel Tov's textual criticism methodology -- the same framework used for classifying Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts -- to the Book of Mormon's Isaiah passages. Her findings include 370 total variants in 216 of 433 verses, classified by ancient textual tradition as follows:[23:1]

CategoryCount
Agree with Septuagint (LXX)76
Agree with Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls)28
Agree with Masoretic Text (MT)52
Non-aligned (no known source)150

(The remaining 64 variants are classified by Ellertson as italicized-word-related; that axis is independent of textual-tradition alignment and gets separate treatment in the italics section above.) Using Tov's criteria, the Book of Mormon's Isaiah qualifies as an "independent" or "non-aligned text" -- a text that has evolved away from all known biblical text families.[23:2]

"Non-aligned" classification by itself does not resolve provenance: it is consistent with both an independent ancient textual witness and a 19th-century author making editorial changes to the KJV. Combined with the 156 variants that do match ancient sources (76 LXX + 28 Qumran + 52 MT), the 150 non-aligned variants gain weight under a cumulative reading -- but the cumulative case rests on the alignments, not on the non-alignments alone.

"All the Ships of the Sea": Preserving Both Textual Traditions ​

Key Point

The CES Letter cites Isaiah 2:16 as a KJV "error" but does not mention what the Book of Mormon does with this verse. At 2 Nephi 12:16, the Book of Mormon preserves both the Hebrew tradition ("ships of Tarshish") and the Greek Septuagint tradition ("ships of the sea") -- arguably a textually superior reading at the exact verse the CES Letter cites as a problem. Joseph Smith could not read Greek, and no English Septuagint was widely available in 1829.

At 2 Nephi 12:16 (Isaiah 2:16), the Book of Mormon reads: "upon all the ships of the sea, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures."[28]

The KJV has only: "upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures."

The Greek Septuagint (LXX) has: "upon all the ships of the sea, and upon every display of fine ships."[28:1]

SourceReading at Isaiah 2:16
KJV (Masoretic Hebrew tradition)"upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures"
Greek Septuagint (LXX)"upon all the ships of the sea, and upon every display of fine ships"
2 Nephi 12:16"upon all the ships of the sea, and upon all the ships of Tarshish, and upon all pleasant pictures"

The Book of Mormon uniquely preserves both lines. Dana Pike and David Seely argue the original Isaiah contained both parallel poetic lines, and each later textual tradition lost one through scribal haplography -- a copyist's eye skipping from one similar phrase to the next.[28:2]

Textual divergence at Isaiah 2:16 — three traditions, two parallel linesThree rows showing what each textual tradition preserves at Isaiah 2:16. The KJV preserves "ships of Tarshish" and "pleasant pictures" but is missing the parallel line "ships of the sea". The Septuagint preserves "ships of the sea" and "every display of fine ships" but is missing "ships of Tarshish". The Book of Mormon (2 Nephi 12:16) is the only tradition that preserves both parallel poetic lines plus the third element. A horizontal red strikethrough marks each lost line; the Book of Mormon row is outlined in brand blue.Each tradition lost one parallel line — the Book of Mormon kept bothTradition"ships of the sea"parallel half 1"ships of Tarshish"parallel half 2third elementpost-parallel phraseKJV(MasoreticHebrew)"ships of the sea"lost via eye-skip"ships of Tarshish"✓"pleasant pictures"✓Septuagint(LXX, Greek)"ships of the sea"✓"ships of Tarshish"lost via eye-skip"every displayof fine ships"✓Book ofMormon2 Nephi 12:16"ships of the sea"✓"ships of Tarshish"✓"pleasant pictures"✓Preserved in traditionLost via scribal eye-skip (haplography)2 Nephi 12:16 preserves all threePike & Seely (2005): each tradition lost one parallel line through eye-skip between the repeating "upon all the ships of..." opening.
Both the KJV (Hebrew) and the Septuagint (Greek) preserve only one half of the original parallel pair. Only 2 Nephi 12:16 preserves both — a textually superior reading at the exact verse the CES Letter cites as an "error."

Joseph Smith could not read Greek -- he began studying Greek and Latin only in the 1830s and 1840s, with notebooks dating well after the Book of Mormon's 1829 completion.[29] The first widely available English Septuagint (Brenton's) was not published until 1844; the earlier Thomson translation (1808) had a print run of ~1,000 copies, most destroyed unsold.[30] A theoretical objection: the LXX reading might have been mentioned in some English commentary available in frontier New York. Adam Clarke's commentary (1810-1826) is the obvious candidate. Whether Joseph had access in 1829 and whether Clarke specifically discussed this variant is contested. Either way, the Book of Mormon contains a reading that combines two textual traditions at the exact verse the CES Letter cites as a KJV error.

The KJV Italics Pattern ​

The CES Letter highlights KJV italicized words in the Book of Mormon as evidence of copying. KJV italics mark words the translators added for English readability that are not in the underlying Hebrew or Greek. The CES Letter cites two examples where the Book of Mormon retains all italicized words and treats this as representative.[2:1]

It is not. Stan Spencer reports that approximately 40% of KJV italicized words are omitted or replaced in the Book of Mormon's Isaiah chapters, compared to only 1% of non-italicized words.[16:1] Daniel Belnap, with different methodology, documented 38%.[31] David P. Wright (the article's most rigorous critic) reported a similar ~40% figure. Estimates range 30-45% depending on counting choices (whether italicized articles and auxiliary verbs are included, which Isaiah chapters are sampled). The precise ratio is not a fixed datum, but the gross pattern -- italicized words are statistically much more likely to be omitted -- is robust. Neither simple plagiarism (which would reproduce all words) nor independent translation (which would have no reason to track KJV italics) produces this.

Spencer's "Missing Words" hypothesis: Joseph received a visioned English text in which a prior translator had already removed KJV italicized words, and Joseph attempted imperfectly to restore meaning. The hypothesis is built around an 1831 Sun (Philadelphia) article in which Martin Harris reportedly said Joseph would "omit all the words in the Bible that were printed in Italic," and when Harris corrected him, "persisted that the plates were right, and the Bible was wrong."[16:2] This is a constructive hypothesis -- Spencer reads the 1831 account as describing a real translation practice and builds the explanation around it; the 1831 source is also a critical newspaper postdating the translation by two years. It is one explanatory model among several rather than a settled finding.

The erratic quality of the restorations is meaningful but not decisive. The variants are uneven and sometimes damage meaning -- consistent with Spencer's "unlearned reader trying to restore missing words" reading, but also consistent with rapid editorial revision. The observational signature is not unique to either hypothesis.

Further Reading

For a detailed analysis of the KJV italics question -- including the broken grammar pattern, the 1837 corrections, and the 1831 eyewitness account -- see our companion article on KJV Italics.

The JST Discrepancy: Engaging the Strongest Argument ​

The CES Letter's third claim argues that the Book of Mormon should match the JST rather than the KJV.[3:1] This rests on the assumption that the JST is a restoration of the original biblical text. Latter-day Saint scholarship has long offered multiple models for the JST. Robert J. Matthews described it as "an inspired revision of the King James Version" with "additions, deletions, rearrangements, and other forms of editing" -- not solely recovery of lost text.[32] Kent P. Jackson concluded the JST is "not intended primarily or solely as a restoration of lost Bible text."[33] If the JST is partly commentary or expansion, the argument that the Book of Mormon "should match" the JST in every case weakens considerably.

The stronger version of the JST argument: in several JST changes, Joseph Smith corrected what modern scholars agree are genuine KJV translation errors. If Joseph had that ability in 1832, why did the divine translation fail to catch those same errors in 1829? The defensible faithful response has two elements. First, the JST was produced after years of additional study and revelation -- "line upon line, precept upon precept." Second, the KJV-scaffolding model explains the mechanism: the divine translation used KJV phrasing where the underlying text substantially overlapped, including its imperfections, rather than producing a fresh translation of every biblical passage. The Sermon at the Temple is also presented to a different audience -- 3 Nephi 12:1-2 rewrites the Beatitudes to reference baptism. The CES Letter cherry-picks the passages that match while ignoring those that differ.[34]

Further Reading

For a detailed analysis of the JST discrepancy, the Sermon on the Mount, and the "without a cause" variant that aligns with the earliest Greek manuscripts, see our companion article on KJV Mistranslations.

Early Modern English: Suggestive but Debated Evidence ​

If Joseph Smith simply copied from the KJV, the Book of Mormon's language should derive from the KJV. Stanford Carmack and Royal Skousen identified extensive Early Modern English (EME) grammar and vocabulary in the Book of Mormon that they argue predates the KJV and cannot be derived from it.[35] The cleanest sub-argument in this section does not depend on contested corpus methodology: Joseph's own 1832 history shows modern English when he wrote in his own voice -- not Early Modern English.[36] Whatever the Book of Mormon's archaic features are, they are not Joseph's personal style. This personal-baseline comparison holds the author constant; whether the broader EME thesis succeeds or fails, the gap between Joseph's documented 1832 prose and the Book of Mormon's prose remains a real datum.

Beyond that baseline, Skousen and Carmack documented 41 archaic word meanings absent from the KJV entirely:[37]

Word/PhraseBoM PassageMeaningLast Known UseIn KJV?
"but if" (= "unless")Mosiah 3:19unlessSpenser, 1596No
"cross" (= "contradict")Alma 10:16, Mosiah 12:19to contradict1589-1702 (obsolete)No
"departed" (= "divided")Helaman 8:11divided/parted (Red Sea)1297-1677No
"to that" (= "until")1 Nephi 18:9untillate Middle English-1600sNo

These lexical findings are the most concrete part of Carmack's case -- specific words used in specific Book of Mormon passages with meanings that died out before 1611. Additional grammatical findings amplify the pattern:

  • Periphrastic did: The Book of Mormon uses past-tense periphrastic did at 24% -- matching 16th-century English texts, not 1820s American English (and not the KJV at 1.2%).[35:1]
  • Personal which: The Book of Mormon uses which as a personal relative pronoun at 52%, a rate that does not match the KJV.[35:2]
  • Lest-shall construction: The Book of Mormon uses this 14 times at a rate 17 times higher than the Bible; zero instances appear in pseudo-biblical writings of the era.[35:3]

An important academic-status caveat: Carmack publishes almost exclusively in Interpreter (an LDS scholarly venue), and his corpus methodology -- early-modern collocation searches in OED and EEBO databases -- has not yet been substantively engaged by mainstream historical-linguistics journals. The McGuire critique[38] is one inner-LDS dispute; the broader external situation is that mainstream historical linguistics has not yet weighed in. Standard objections are real: any large corpus will contain statistical outliers, pseudo-biblical authors adopt archaic registers, and collocation databases have coverage gaps. The lexical findings are the most resilient core because they make point claims about specific words rather than statistical inferences from frequency distributions; the grammatical-frequency claims are more dependent on corpus methodology that has not yet been independently validated. The Joseph-1832 baseline remains the cleanest sub-argument, since it does not depend on the contested corpus methodology at all.

Hebraisms the KJV Does Not Explain ​

The Book of Mormon contains Hebrew language patterns that do not come from the KJV:

  • The if-and conditional construction: Mosiah 2:21 originally reads "if ye should serve him with your whole soul -- and yet ye would be unprofitable servants." This Hebrew-style conditional using "and" instead of "then" appears nowhere in the KJV. It appears seven times in Helaman 12:13-21's original manuscript.[39]
  • Construct state: "works of righteousness" instead of "righteous works" -- reflects Hebrew grammatical word order.[39:1]
  • A sophisticated Hebraism in 2 Nephi 12:2: Paul Hoskisson demonstrated that the Book of Mormon's reading of "when" instead of KJV's "that" creates a Hebrew waw functioning as "then" -- a grammatical construction described in Gesenius's Hebrew grammar that requires advanced Hebrew knowledge no fourth-year Hebrew student would automatically possess.[40]
  • Semitic name wordplay: Shilom derives from Hebrew root shlm (peace); Zeniff requests the land "in peace" and receives Shilom but experiences war there instead -- an ironic wordplay invisible to English readers.[39:2]

Donald Parry, a Dead Sea Scrolls translator himself, concluded: "the Book of Mormon's use of Hebraistic literary forms cannot simply be attributed to Joseph Smith's familiarity with the English Bible."[39:3] These features appear outside the KJV-quoted passages -- evidence the simple-plagiarism hypothesis has nothing to say about.

Isaiah Is Woven In, Not Pasted In ​

The CES Letter frames Isaiah quotations as if they were pasted into the Book of Mormon wholesale. The textual evidence shows sophisticated literary integration that is inconsistent with plagiarism and consistent with genuine ancient prophetic engagement.

Nephi selected specific Isaiah chapters that mirror his family's exile experience. S. Kent Brown demonstrated that Isaiah 48-49 tracks the family's lived situation -- exile from Jerusalem, water from rocks in the desert (48:21), peace "as a river" (48:18) echoing Lehi naming the river Laman.[41] John Welch identified a four-stage prophetic framework (Christ's coming, scattering, Gentile era, restoration) that Nephi constructed from Isaiah 2-14 -- a framework not laid out in Isaiah itself. Someone had to build it and map Isaiah onto it.[42] When Nephi reaches Isaiah 29, he adapts the language using a method scholars have compared to the ancient Jewish pesher technique (an interpretive method attested in the Dead Sea Scrolls in which a quoted prophet is read as referring to the interpreter's own situation). He repurposes Isaiah's symbolism of a sealed book (about Jerusalem's fall) into a prophecy about a literal book (the Book of Mormon).[43] American preachers in Joseph Smith's era routinely applied Old Testament prophecy to contemporary events, so the comparison is meaningful only to the extent that Nephi's method shares specific structural features with DSS pesharim that differ from generic Protestant application -- systematic alternation between quoted text and interpretive commentary, the claim that the quoted prophet was referring to the interpreter's own situation, and reformulation rather than allegorization. The pesharim were not discovered until 1947.

Matthew Bowen identified an inclusio -- a bracketing literary frame -- around the entire Isaiah block in 2 Nephi: the opening (2 Nephi 5:30-31) reads "thou shalt engraven many things upon them which are good," and the closing (2 Nephi 25:7-8) reads "for their good have I written them." The Egyptian name Nephi itself derives from nfr, meaning "good" -- creating a trilingual wordplay (Hebrew/Egyptian/English) that a 19th-century author could not have designed.[44] At 2 Nephi 12:12 and 12:14, Nephi further added clauses absent from the Hebrew Masoretic Text, universalizing Isaiah's judgment imagery to apply to "all nations." This matches his stated purpose in 2 Nephi 25:3: "that they may know the judgments of God, that they come upon all nations."[45] These are not the actions of a plagiarist. They are the actions of an author who understood his source text deeply and adapted it deliberately.

Joseph M. Spencer's A Word in Season: Isaiah's Reception in the Book of Mormon (University of Illinois Press, 2023) -- a non-LDS-press peer-reviewed monograph -- examines how Isaiah is received and reinterpreted across the Book of Mormon by Abinadi, the resurrected Christ, and Nephi. Spencer argues the Book of Mormon's Isaiah usage is theologically sophisticated, not mere copying.[46] Joshua Sears's 2024 BYU Studies Quarterly review treats Spencer's work as a major recent contribution to the field.[47] An important caveat: Spencer's argument is literary and theological, not a defense of historical antiquity. The monograph is cited here for the sophistication of the Book of Mormon's Isaiah-engagement (evidence against simple plagiarism), not as direct evidence of antiquity.

Further Reading

The two most important recent monographs on Book of Mormon-Isaiah scholarship are Joseph M. Spencer's A Word in Season: Isaiah's Reception in the Book of Mormon (University of Illinois Press, 2023) -- a non-LDS-press peer-reviewed academic edition -- and his earlier The Vision of All: Twenty-Five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi's Record (Greg Kofford Books, 2016). Joshua Sears's 2024 BYU Studies Quarterly review is the current state-of-the-field assessment from BYU's leading Hebrew Bible scholar.

The Brass Plates as an Independent Textual Tradition ​

Noel Reynolds argued that the brass plates represent a pre-exilic Josephite (Manassite) textual tradition distinct from the Judahite tradition that produced the Masoretic Text and the KJV:[48] the brass plates included prophets unknown to post-exilic Jewish tradition (Zenos, Zenock, Neum, Ezias); Lehi was "taught in the language of the Egyptians" (1 Nephi 1:2); the brass plates were written in Egyptian, matching a Josephite scribal tradition; archaeological evidence (Orly Goldwasser) documents Egyptian scribal influence in seventh-century Israel.[48:1] Evidence Central catalogs 33 internal claims about the brass plates maintained consistently despite the text being dictated out of sequence.[49]

This provides a plausible mechanism for why the Book of Mormon's Isaiah differs from the KJV: the brass plates preserved a separate textual family that diverged centuries before the Masoretic tradition was standardized.

The Adam Clarke Hypothesis ​

Colby Townsend argued that Joseph Smith consulted Adam Clarke's Bible commentary (published 1810-1826) while dictating Isaiah passages.[50] Kent P. Jackson responded with a detailed examination of all eleven proposed cases across roughly 400 Isaiah verses, concluding "none of his proposed borrowings from Clarke can be sustained" -- the variants Townsend identified reflect common Book of Mormon Isaiah patterns rather than Clarke-specific influence, share minimal or no vocabulary with Clarke's text, or rest on misreadings of Clarke's actual argument.[51]

The scholarly conversation is ongoing. Townsend published a 2025 follow-up in the Journal of the Bible and its Reception. The related JST claim (Wayment & Wilson-Lemmon 2020) is a separate literature; even Wilson-Lemmon concedes the JST work "cannot properly be called plagiarism."[52] On the Book of Mormon claim specifically, Jackson's critique is detailed and substantive, and the Adam Clarke hypothesis currently lacks a strong evidentiary foundation.

The Strongest Critical Arguments ​

The CES Letter's version of this argument is not the strongest available. The most rigorous critical case comes from scholars like David P. Wright, Colby Townsend, Stan Larson, and Grant Hardy. Intellectual honesty requires engaging their arguments directly rather than only responding to the CES Letter's weaker formulation.

Wright's KJV Dependency Thesis ​

David P. Wright's essay in American Apocrypha (2002) is the most comprehensive critical treatment.[53] His argument identifies seven categories of evidence for KJV dependence: literal reproduction, KJV italics preoccupation, preserved translation errors, English polysemy variants, Hebrew inconsistencies, secondary expansions, and the Deutero-Isaiah anachronism.

Wright's strongest piece of evidence is the statistical pattern of missing KJV italics. Only ~3.6% of words in the cited Isaiah chapters are italicized in the KJV, but italicized words show variation at roughly the 40% rate documented above, while non-italicized words vary at only about 1% -- a disparity Wright argued proves direct KJV dependence.[53:1]

This is a genuinely strong argument. Spencer's "Missing Words" hypothesis offers an alternative reading: a visioned text in which a prior translator had already removed KJV italicized words, with Joseph imperfectly restoring meaning -- which would produce exactly the observed pattern. Spencer builds the hypothesis around the 1831 Sun (Philadelphia) account; the hypothesis is a constructive explanation rather than independent confirmation.[16:3] Wright's analysis also does not account for the Dead Sea Scroll alignments or the Septuagint reading at 2 Nephi 12:16. Tvedtnes documented 59 Book of Mormon variants confirmed by ancient manuscripts -- readings Wright's thesis struggles to explain if the Book of Mormon is merely a KJV revision.[54]

English Polysemy Variants ​

Wright identified what he considered his most decisive evidence: Book of Mormon variants that exploit the polysemy (multiple meanings) of English words.[53:2] His key example:

  • Isaiah 2:10 (KJV): "for fear of the Lord, and for the glory of his majesty"
  • 2 Nephi 12:10: "for the fear of the Lord and the glory of his majesty shall smite thee"

The word "for" shifts from a causal preposition ("because of") to part of a subject phrase. This variant exploits the multiple meanings of the English word "for." In Hebrew, the preposition used (mippenei) has no such ambiguity. Wright argued this variant could only arise from someone working in English, not from someone translating Hebrew.[53:3]

This is a challenging observation. Under the KJV-scaffolding model, it is possible that the visioned text included modifications based on the English rendering that were imperfectly transmitted. This is less satisfying than a clean explanation, and the polysemy variants remain one of the strongest pieces of evidence in the critical case. Not every data point has a tidy answer. Honest acknowledgment of where the evidence is hardest is part of taking the question seriously.

The Deutero-Isaiah Question ​

Worth Acknowledging

The presence of post-exilic Isaiah material in the Book of Mormon is one of the genuinely hardest challenges for Book of Mormon historicity. The evidence cannot be dismissed, and the scholarly consensus is strong. What follows is an honest assessment of both the difficulty and the available faithful responses.

The Deutero-Isaiah hypothesis divides Isaiah into at least two authors: Proto-Isaiah (chapters 1-39, ~700 BC) and Deutero-Isaiah (chapters 40-55, ~545 BC, an anonymous exilic author), with some scholars adding Trito-Isaiah (chapters 56-66, ~500 BC).[55] The Book of Mormon quotes from Deutero-Isaiah sections: 1 Nephi 20-21 (Isaiah 48-49), 2 Nephi 7-8 (Isaiah 50-51). If these chapters were written after 545 BC, they could not have been on the brass plates when Lehi left Jerusalem around 597 BC.

Joshua Sears, a Hebrew Bible scholar at BYU, outlined five major reasons scholars posit multiple authors: shifts in narrative voice, changes in presumed historical setting, literary dependencies on later biblical texts, thematic and stylistic differences, and linguistic analysis showing "Transitional Biblical Hebrew" features in chapters 40-66.[55:1]

Grant Hardy, a faithful Latter-day Saint scholar writing for Oxford University Press, acknowledged honestly: "Recent Isaiah scholarship has moved...in favor of seeing the book of Isaiah as the product of several centuries of intensive redaction." He further conceded that "even chapters 1-39 underwent considerable revision and augmentation after 600 BCE."[56] Sears's own assessment is that existing LDS defenses of Isaianic unity are "relatively superficial" compared to the "detail and rigor" of the critical scholarship.[55:2]

Faithful Approaches to the Evidence ​

Faithful scholarship engaging this question carries acknowledged limitations. Avi Hurvitz argued that Deutero-Isaiah shows "well anchored" Classical Biblical Hebrew without the substantial Late Biblical Hebrew markers expected of a genuinely post-exilic text, though Hurvitz himself did not conclude single authorship.[57] Avraham Gileadi documented a complex "Bifid Structure" in Isaiah that David Noel Freedman called "a major breakthrough."[58] Daniel Ellsworth observed that Jeremiah 11:19 uses language strikingly similar to Isaiah 53:7-8, suggesting Jeremiah knew these passages as authentic Isaiah material during his early career.[57:1] L. Lamar Adams and Alvin Rencher's 1975 BYU computerized stylistic analysis "strongly supported single authorship," though its methodology predates modern computational authorship attribution.[59] Sears characterizes this body of work as "relatively superficial" compared to the critical scholarship.[55:3] Some major scholars (Brevard Childs, John Goldingay, Christopher Seitz) defend forms of unity at the canonical or theological level while accepting historical-critical layering at the compositional level; citing them for "Isaianic unity" in the historical-critical sense overstates what they argue. The historical-critical consensus that Isaiah underwent post-exilic redaction is strong.

Sears cataloged four faithful approaches to the evidence:[55:4]

ApproachKey ScholarsStrengthLimitation
1. Dismiss scholarly dating -- the BoM is the authorityTalmage, McConkieStrong faith commitmentAvoids engaging real evidence
2. Defend Isaiah's unity on textual groundsAdams, Rencher, Gileadi, JacksonEngages evidence directlyLDS treatments remain brief vs. book-length critical studies
3. Work with scholarship; find nuanced solutionsNibley, Hamblin, WelchBalanced, intellectually satisfyingRequires accepting tension with consensus
4. Explore divine intervention in the textSpencer, Gardner, FrederickTheologically sophisticated; removes historical pressureLess empirically testable

William Hamblin proposed that Deutero-Isaiah prophesied after the first deportation to Babylon (597 BC) but before Nephi acquired the brass plates (~595-594 BC), closing the gap from centuries to a few decades.[55:5] Lehi may have known Deutero-Isaiah personally. This is the most intellectually satisfying historical solution, though Hardy's observation that "even chapters 1-39 underwent considerable revision and augmentation after 600 BCE" complicates approaches depending on early dating alone. Approach 4 has a scriptural precedent: Jesus himself directed the Nephites to add Malachi 3-4 to their records (3 Nephi 24-25) -- chapters written after 600 BC that could not have been on the original brass plates. If God could add Malachi by direct revelation, the same mechanism could account for other post-exilic content.[55:6]

Given that Hardy and Sears -- the leading LDS Isaiah scholars currently active -- both characterize the unity-defense (Approach 2) as inadequate to the critical case, this article privileges Approaches 3 and 4. Hamblin's narrow dating for most Deutero-Isaiah material, supplemented by divine revelation for content outside that window, is the most defensible faithful framework -- but it involves genuine tension with mainstream scholarship.

Townsend's Trito-Isaiah Extension ​

Colby Townsend extended the problem beyond Deutero-Isaiah, arguing that even Isaiah 2-14 -- the "First Isaiah" chapters Nephi quotes in 2 Nephi 12-24 -- underwent substantial post-exilic redaction.[60] He also identified Trito-Isaiah echoes in original Book of Mormon compositions:

  • "Robe of righteousness" (2 Nephi 4:33, 9:14) -- from Isaiah 61:10 (Trito-Isaiah, ~500 BC)
  • "Mighty to save" (2 Nephi 31:19, Alma 7:14, 34:18) -- from Isaiah 63:1 (Trito-Isaiah)
  • Dependence on Isaiah 65:2 (Trito-Isaiah), mediated through Romans 10:21 (2 Nephi 28:32, Jacob 5:47, 6:4)[60:1]

These are not quoted chapters that could be explained as brass-plates content. They are phrases woven into the Book of Mormon's own narrative voice. The phrase "mighty to save" from Isaiah 63:1 appears in passages attributed to Nephite authors (Alma 7:14, 34:18, 2 Nephi 31:19) -- original compositions, not quotations. If Trito-Isaiah was composed centuries after Lehi left Jerusalem, Nephite authors should not be using its distinctive language.

The Romans 10:21 mediation -- Trito-Isaiah phraseology filtered through Pauline epistles, appearing in pre-Christian Nephite voices -- is the hardest single data point in this article, and the Malachi precedent does not cleanly resolve it.[61] A KJV-scaffolding response might be that these phrases reflect the English rendering rather than original Nephite composition -- the translation process supplying familiar KJV-tradition phraseology because the underlying Nephite concept was close enough to be captured by it. This is defensible within the framework, but it concedes that for these passages the "translation" was loose enough that English idiom from later Christian scripture supplied the wording. Faithful scholarship has not yet produced a clean resolution; the available frameworks accommodate the data without crisply explaining it.

The Sermon on the Mount (3 Nephi 12-14) ​

Key Point

At Matthew 5:22 / 3 Nephi 12:22, the Book of Mormon omits "without a cause" -- aligning with the earliest Greek manuscripts (P67, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus) against the KJV's Textus Receptus reading. The textual judgment is contested in modern New Testament criticism, but the alignment with the earliest extant manuscripts is striking, and the modern critical Greek text adopts the omission.

Stan Larson applied New Testament textual criticism to 3 Nephi's Sermon on the Mount and identified eight specific textual variants where modern critics agree the earliest Greek manuscripts differ from the Textus Receptus, the KJV follows the late Textus Receptus reading, and the Book of Mormon follows the KJV in seven of the eight cases.[62]

The most prominent exception is striking. At Matthew 5:22 / 3 Nephi 12:22:

SourceReading
KJV"whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment"
Textus Receptus(includes eike, "without a cause")
Earliest Greek Manuscripts (P67, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus)(no eike)
3 Nephi 12:22"whosoever is angry with his brother shall be in danger of his judgment"

The Book of Mormon omits "without a cause" -- diverging from the KJV to align with the earliest extant Greek manuscripts.[62:1] Joseph Smith couldn't read Greek in 1829, and he had no direct access to the earliest manuscripts.[29:1] The omission has subsequently been adopted by major modern Bible translations -- the RSV in 1946, the NIV in 1973, and the modern critical Greek texts (Nestle-Aland, UBS). Jerome noted the phrase was absent from the oldest manuscripts known to him, and Bruce Metzger concluded it was "much more likely that the word was added by copyists in order to soften the rigor of the precept, than omitted as unnecessary."[63] Judd and Stoddard argue the omission directly affects doctrinal meaning: Jesus's command without "without a cause" is a demanding ethical standard against anger itself.[64]

The textual criticism is genuinely contested. Byzantine-priority scholars (Robinson, Pierpont) defend the inclusion as original; the Tyndale House Greek New Testament committee and several recent commentators (Porter, Stein) argue the omission may itself be a later harmonizing simplification. The Book of Mormon's omission aligns with one major textual tradition (Alexandrian-priority) against another (Byzantine).

A separate question is whether Joseph could have known about the variant from a 19th-century source. Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810-1826) discusses the eike variant. Whether Joseph saw Clarke's discussion in 1829 is contested. If he did, the alignment is a noteworthy interpretive choice but not direct evidence of access to ancient manuscripts. If he did not, it is significant alignment with what later critical scholarship would establish as the earliest reading. Either way, the Book of Mormon publishes a reading that the modern critical text adopts, in the face of the available KJV.

The remaining seven Textus Receptus agreements are a real challenge. Under the KJV-scaffolding model, they are consistent with the same principle observed in the Isaiah passages: where the Nephite text substantially overlapped with Jesus's Galilean sermon, the KJV rendering was used as the English foundation. John Welch's Illuminating the Sermon at the Temple and Sermon on the Mount documents that the great majority of 3 Nephi 12-14 is verbatim from Matthew 5-7, but with significant deletions and additions throughout, demonstrating the text is not a simple copy.[65] The Textus Receptus agreements remain a genuine tension point, partially offset by the striking "without a cause" omission that aligns with the earliest manuscripts.

Further Reading

Our companion article on KJV Mistranslations examines the Sermon on the Mount in detail, including the "without a cause" variant, the Stendahl analysis from Harvard Divinity School, and Welch's identification of approximately 50 temple-related elements in 3 Nephi's version.

Evidence Supporting Church Truth Claims ​

The positive evidence for the Book of Mormon's Isaiah passages goes beyond defending against criticism. Several features of the text are difficult or impossible to explain under any naturalistic hypothesis.

The 1 Nephi 21:1 Chiastic Preface ​

The Book of Mormon adds an entire poetic preface to Isaiah 49:1 that does not appear in the KJV or Masoretic Text:

"And again: Hearken, O ye house of Israel, all ye that are broken off and are driven out because of the wickedness of the pastors of my people; yea, all ye that are broken off, that are scattered abroad, who are of my people, O house of Israel."

Tvedtnes identified this as having ABCDC'B'A' chiastic structure -- a Hebrew literary form. The systematic modern study of chiasmus in biblical literature was developed by 20th-century scholars (Nils Lund 1942; John Welch's Chiasmus in Antiquity 1981), but the phenomenon had been observed earlier: Robert Lowth's De Sacra Poesi Hebraeorum (1753) developed the foundational theory of Hebrew poetic parallelism (focused on direct parallelism); John Jebb's Sacred Literature (1820) explicitly identified and named introverted parallelism (epanodos); and Thomas Boys's Tactica Sacra (1824) extended Jebb's framework to the New Testament epistles -- all before the Book of Mormon's publication.[66] What is not documented is Joseph Smith having access to or training in any of this scholarship. Constructing a working Hebrew-style chiasm and inserting it seamlessly into a longer Isaiah passage required knowledge an unschooled frontier farmer is unlikely to have possessed.[22:3]

Skousen's Manuscript Findings ​

Royal Skousen's multi-decade Critical Text Project yields findings that collectively favor an ancient origin:[67] the original manuscript is closer to the KJV than the printer's manuscript (the opposite of what we would expect if Smith were introducing changes while reading from a Bible); Isaiah passages that appear multiple times in the Book of Mormon remain internally consistent without reference to a printed source; the original chapter divisions ignore the KJV chapter system entirely; and when Smith later produced the JST, he incorporated Book of Mormon readings into Isaiah -- treating the Book of Mormon as authoritative source, not derivative. (For the broader question of what counts as a "change" in the Book of Mormon's textual history -- including the CES Letter's "100,000 changes" framing -- see our companion article on Godhead Changes.)

The Physical Constraints of Translation ​

The stone-in-hat method, confirmed by multiple eyewitnesses and acknowledged in the Gospel Topics essay, makes continuous Bible consultation impractical, though not strictly impossible.[9:1] Lucy Mack Smith stated that Joseph "had never read the Bible through" before the translation -- a claim about systematic reading rather than about general biblical familiarity.[68] There is no evidence of a family Bible serving as a constant household reference during dictation in the way a fabricator's source text would need to be.

The sheer volume of non-biblical content -- the remaining 93% of the text -- includes unique narrative, proper names with plausible Semitic etymology, internal geography, complex theology, Hebraisms independent of the KJV, and chiastic structures. Even if every KJV-related claim were granted in full, it would not explain the origin of this material. The Book of Mormon was dictated in approximately 60 working days with no substantive revisions, producing approximately 269,000 words, over 330 proper names with internal consistency, and multiple literary genres.[69]

Further Reading

For the broader question of archaeological and textual evidence for the Book of Mormon's antiquity, see our companion articles on Archaeology, Anachronisms, and DNA and the Book of Mormon.

Assessment ​

The CES Letter's weak version -- "errors unique to the 1769 edition" -- is factually inaccurate. There are no errors unique to the 1769 edition; Skousen narrows the likely source to the post-1769 American printings of the 1770s through the 1820s, not the 1769 Oxford edition. (That finding does not by itself rebut the broader concern that post-1611 KJV features are reflected in the Book of Mormon, but it shows the CES Letter has not done its textual homework.) The strong version -- Wright, Townsend, Larson, Hardy -- is substantially harder: the KJV italics ~40% disparity, the genuine mistranslations, the English polysemy variants, the seven Textus Receptus agreements in 3 Nephi, the Trito-Isaiah phrases in original Book of Mormon compositions, and the Deutero-Isaiah question represent real challenges.

The most defensible faithful position acknowledges that the KJV served as the English scaffolding for biblical-passage translation. The Isaiah chapters are not fresh translations from an ancient language. The KJV's fingerprints are genuinely there. But the evidence shows that something more than the KJV is present: readings confirmed by Dead Sea Scrolls, 150 variants matching no known textual tradition, archaic Hebrew forms, Septuagint alignments, archaic English vocabulary independent of the KJV, and sophisticated literary integration.

The strongest positive evidence comes from data points the simple-plagiarism hypothesis cannot easily explain: the Dead Sea Scroll alignments at passages where the Book of Mormon agrees with manuscripts buried for two millennia; the dual reading at 2 Nephi 12:16, which preserves both the Hebrew and Greek textual traditions where each on its own had lost half the original parallelism; the "without a cause" omission at 3 Nephi 12:22, which aligns with the earliest Greek manuscripts (though the textual judgment is contested); and the disproportionate variation in italicized words.

The Deutero-Isaiah question is the most significant remaining challenge. Hardy and Sears -- the leading LDS Isaiah scholars -- both characterize the unity-defense as inadequate to the critical case. Faithful approaches (Hamblin's narrow dating; Approach 4 divine intervention modeled on the Malachi precedent) offer frameworks but do not achieve the consensus the critical position commands. The Trito-Isaiah phrases in original Book of Mormon compositions, particularly the mediation through Romans 10:21, are genuinely difficult and remain unresolved.

A reader who concludes the simple-plagiarism hypothesis fails -- and on the evidence above, it does -- still has the rest of the Book of Mormon to account for. The 93% of the text that has no KJV parallel includes Hebraisms Joseph could not have known, archaic vocabulary older than its supposed source, internally consistent narrative geography, and literary architecture only visible under modern scholarly tools. The text was dictated in roughly 60 working days, producing ~270,000 words with over 330 proper names internally consistent and no substantive revisions.[69:1] The KJV question is bounded; the Book of Mormon's existence as a coherent text is not.

The simple plagiarism narrative is clearly inadequate. The fuller critical case raises genuine challenges that faithful scholarship has not resolved in every particular. But the positive evidence -- the Dead Sea Scroll alignments, the Septuagint reading at 2 Nephi 12:16, the "without a cause" omission, and the non-KJV linguistic features -- provides substantive reasons to take the Book of Mormon's claims seriously alongside the honest tensions.

  1. Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 1, p. 9. ↩︎ ↩︎

  2. Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," nos. 1-2, pp. 9-10. ↩︎ ↩︎

  3. Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," no. 3, pp. 10-11. ↩︎ ↩︎

  4. Philip L. Barlow, Mormons and the Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). Barlow documented 27 of 239 chapters as primarily biblical quotation, totaling approximately 16,000-18,000 words of the Book of Mormon's ~270,000 words. ↩︎ ↩︎

  5. Royal Skousen, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Part Five: The King James Quotations in the Book of Mormon (Provo, UT: FARMS / BYU Studies, 2019). Identified 36 direct KJV quotations and 83 paraphrastic quotations. The KJV edition reflected in the Book of Mormon dates to the 1670s or later based on substantive differences, and to the 1770s or later when italics changes are included. Skousen narrows the likely source to post-1769 American printings of the 1770s-1820s range -- not the 1769 Oxford edition. See also Royal Skousen, "The History of the Book of Mormon Text: Parts 5 and 6 of Volume 3 of the Critical Text," BYU Studies Quarterly 59, no. 1 (2020): 87-128. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol59/iss1/5/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  6. B.H. Roberts, "Bible Quotations in the Book of Mormon, and the Reasonableness of Nephi's Prophecies," Improvement Era 7, nos. 3-5 (January-March 1904). Roberts addressed the KJV language objection over 120 years ago, arguing that biblical quotation patterns in the Book of Mormon are consistent with an ancient author drawing on a shared Isaianic scriptural tradition. https://scripturecentral.org/archive/periodicals/magazine-article/bible-quotations-book-mormon-and-reasonableness-nephis-prophecies ↩︎

  7. Emma Smith, interview with Joseph Smith III, published in Saints' Herald 26 (1 October 1879): 289-290. ↩︎

  8. David Whitmer, An Address to All Believers in Christ (Richmond, MO: 1887), 12. ↩︎

  9. "Book of Mormon Translation," Gospel Topics Essays, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/book-of-mormon-translation?lang=eng ↩︎ ↩︎

  10. Royal Skousen, "How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7, no. 1 (1998): 22-31. https://scripturecentral.org/archive/periodicals/journal-article/how-joseph-smith-translated-book-mormon-evidence-original-manuscript ↩︎

  11. Oliver Cowdery purchased a Bible on October 8, 1829, months after the translation was completed in late June 1829. See Royal Skousen, "How Joseph Smith Translated the Book of Mormon: Evidence from the Original Manuscript," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 7, no. 1 (1998): 22-31. ↩︎

  12. Royal Skousen, The History of the Text of the Book of Mormon, Part Seven: The Early Transmissions of the Text (Provo, UT: FARMS / BYU Studies, 2024). 723 pp. Latest published Critical Text volume; covers transmission from Joseph Smith through 1830 publication. https://byustudies.byu.edu/book-of-mormon-critical-text-project ↩︎

  13. FAIR, "Isaiah and the Book of Mormon." Notes that Dead Sea Scrolls translators used KJV language for approximately 90% of the text where manuscripts agreed. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Isaiah_and_the_Book_of_Mormon ↩︎

  14. Blake T. Ostler, "The Book of Mormon as a Modern Expansion of an Ancient Source," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 20, no. 1 (1987): 66-123. Seminal articulation of the "modern expansion" model: the Book of Mormon contains genuine ancient material expanded and interpreted through Joseph Smith's nineteenth-century context, including KJV language. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-book-of-mormon-as-a-modern-expansion-of-an-ancient-source/ ↩︎

  15. Brant A. Gardner, The Gift and Power: Translating the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2011). Argues for a functional translation model with "localization" -- adaptation of a translated text to the cultural and linguistic expectations of its audience. https://gregkofford.com/products/the-gift-and-power ↩︎

  16. Stan Spencer, "Missing Words: King James Bible Italics, the Translation of the Book of Mormon, and Joseph Smith as an Unlearned Reader," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 38 (2020): 45-106. Documents the 41%/1% (40:1) disparity in 2 Nephi 16-17 (Isaiah 6-7) specifically; broader-sample studies (Belnap 38%, Wright ~40%) confirm the same general magnitude. Cites "Mormonites," The Sun, August 18, 1831 -- Martin Harris reporting that Joseph "should omit all the words in the Bible that were printed in Italic" and "persisted that the plates were right, and the Bible was wrong." https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/missing-words-king-james-bible-italics-the-translation-of-the-book-of-mormon-and-joseph-smith-as-an-unlearned-reader ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  17. New Testament authors frequently quoted the Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) even where it diverged from the Hebrew original. For example, Matthew 1:23 quotes Isaiah 7:14 using the Septuagint's parthenos ("virgin") rather than the Hebrew almah ("young woman"). This demonstrates that inspired authors working within a scriptural tradition used the available translation rather than independently correcting it against the original language. ↩︎ ↩︎

  18. FAIR, "KJV Translation Errors in the Book of Mormon." The translation choices the CES Letter highlights exist identically in the 1611 KJV. The 1769 revision primarily standardized spelling, punctuation, and typesetting, made several hundred minor wording corrections, and extensively revised italicization. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/KJV_translation_errors_in_the_Book_of_Mormon ↩︎ ↩︎

  19. FAIR, "Detailed Response to CES Letter, Book of Mormon." States "there are no errors that are unique to the 1769 edition." https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/Detailed_response_to_CES_Letter,_Book_of_Mormon ↩︎

  20. FAIR, "KJV Translation Errors in the Book of Mormon." Catalogs 91 alleged translation errors by category. https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/KJV_translation_errors_in_the_Book_of_Mormon ↩︎

  21. "Scholar Survey: King James Version Translation Errors in Book of Mormon Isaiah Passages," A Careful Examination (faenrandir.github.io). Critical/post-Mormon website that compiled survey responses from Hebrew scholars Jan Joosten (then-Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford) and Robert Alter (UC Berkeley). The scholarly assessments were solicited while Joosten held the Oxford chair; the underlying linguistic analysis is cited here for its academic substance regardless of subsequent events. Readers should be aware of the source's critical perspective. https://faenrandir.github.io/a_careful_examination/scholar-survey-kjv-translation-errors-in-bom-isaiah/ ↩︎

  22. John A. Tvedtnes, "Isaiah Variants in the Book of Mormon," in Isaiah and the Prophets, ed. Monte S. Nyman and Charles D. Tate Jr. (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1984), pp. 165-178. Analyzed 234 variants: 59 favor the Book of Mormon, 126 neutral, 49 favor the KJV. https://rsc.byu.edu/isaiah-prophets/isaiah-variants-book-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  23. Carol F. Ellertson, "The Isaiah Passages in the Book of Mormon: A Non-Aligned Text" (MA thesis, Brigham Young University, 2001). Applied Emanuel Tov's textual criticism methodology to classify the Book of Mormon's Isaiah as an independent, non-aligned text. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4663/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  24. Stephen W. Gibson, "Does The Book of Mormon Quote the KJV?" cited in Debunking-CESLetter, "KJV 1769 Errors." 46% of 433 Isaiah verses identical to KJV, 54% modified. https://debunking-cesletter.com/book-of-mormon-1/kjv-1769-errors/ ↩︎

  25. Grant Hardy, The Annotated Book of Mormon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023). The first fully annotated academic edition of the Book of Mormon, modeled after the Oxford Annotated Bible series. Six years of work; ~500 pages of annotations through six drafts. Uses bold formatting to highlight every variation from the KJV in Isaiah passages. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-annotated-book-of-mormon-9780190082208 ↩︎

  26. Grant Hardy, ed., The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ, Maxwell Institute Study Edition (Provo: Maxwell Institute, 2018). Bolds KJV additions and footnotes significant removals. Accessible parallel to the Oxford edition. https://mi.byu.edu/maxwell-institute-study-edition ↩︎

  27. Donald W. Parry and Stephen D. Ricks, "Worthy of Another Look: The Great Isaiah Scroll and the Book of Mormon," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 20, no. 2 (2011): 78-80. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol20/iss2/7/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  28. Dana M. Pike and David R. Seely, "'Upon All the Ships of the Sea, and Upon All the Ships of Tarshish': Revisiting 2 Nephi 12:16 and Isaiah 2:16," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 2 (2005). https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jbms/vol14/iss2/4/ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  29. John W. Welch, "Joseph Smith's Awareness of Greek and Latin," in Approaching Antiquity: Joseph Smith and the Ancient World, ed. Lincoln H. Blumell, Matthew J. Grey, and Andrew H. Hedges (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2015), pp. 303-328. Documents Joseph's actual Greek and Latin study beginning in the 1830s and 1840s, after the Book of Mormon's 1829 completion. https://rsc.byu.edu/approaching-antiquity-joseph-smith-ancient-world/joseph-smiths-awareness-greek-latin ↩︎ ↩︎

  30. Charles Thomson's English translation of the Septuagint was published in 1808 with a print run of approximately 1,000 copies, most of which went unsold and were destroyed; fewer than twenty complete sets survive. For a discussion of its limited circulation and accessibility, see Welch, "Joseph Smith's Awareness of Greek and Latin" (2015). ↩︎

  31. Daniel L. Belnap, "The King James Bible and the Book of Mormon," in The King James Bible and the Restoration, ed. Kent P. Jackson (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2011). Documented 516 variants in Isaiah passages, with 38% of italicized words subject to variation. https://rsc.byu.edu/king-james-bible-restoration/king-james-bible-book-mormon ↩︎

  32. Robert J. Matthews, "A Plainer Translation": Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible -- A History and Commentary (Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press, 1975). Foundational JST scholarship. Matthews described the JST as "an inspired revision of the King James Version" that includes "additions, deletions, rearrangements, and other forms of editing" -- not solely the recovery of lost original text. https://archive.bookofmormoncentral.org/content/plainer-translation-joseph-smiths-translation-bible-history-and-commentary ↩︎

  33. Kent P. Jackson, Understanding Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 2022). Modern definitive treatment of the JST. Concludes that the JST is "not intended primarily or solely as a restoration of lost Bible text." https://rsc.byu.edu/book/understanding-joseph-smiths-translation-bible ↩︎

  34. Runnells, CES Letter (2017), "Book of Mormon," pp. 10-11. The CES Letter presents the Sermon on the Mount passages that match the KJV while not addressing the significant modifications in 3 Nephi 12:1-2 and elsewhere. ↩︎

  35. Stanford Carmack, "Is the Book of Mormon a Pseudo-Archaic Text?" Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 28 (2018): 177-232. Documents past-tense periphrastic did at 24%, personal which at 52%, lest-shall construction at 17x biblical rate. See also Stanford Carmack, "A Plain Exposition of Book of Mormon English by Means of Short Questions and Informed Answers," Interpreter 63 (2025): 107-120. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/is-the-book-of-mormon-a-pseudo-archaic-text ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  36. Stanford Carmack, "How Joseph Smith's Grammar Differed from Book of Mormon Grammar: Evidence from the 1832 History," Interpreter 25 (2017). Joseph's 1832 history shows modern English; the Book of Mormon's archaic features are not his personal style. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/how-joseph-smiths-grammar-differed-from-book-of-mormon-grammar-evidence-from-the-1832-history ↩︎

  37. Evidence Central, "Archaic Vocabulary." Skousen and Carmack identified 90+ lexical items (41 words, 25 phrases, 13 grammar patterns, 14 dialect features) predating Joseph Smith's era, with meanings dating from the 1530s-1730s. These archaic usages do NOT appear in the KJV. https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/archaic-vocabulary ↩︎

  38. The EME thesis has received criticism from within the Latter-day Saint scholarly community. Ben McGuire, "The Late War Against the Book of Mormon," Interpreter 7 (2013): 323-355, critiqued n-gram statistical methodology applied to Book of Mormon language analysis, and has engaged with Carmack's EME arguments in scholarly forums. The debate about the significance and interpretation of archaic English features in the Book of Mormon continues within faithful scholarship. ↩︎

  39. Scripture Central KnoWhy, "Why Are There Hebraisms in the Book of Mormon?" Donald W. Parry: "the Book of Mormon's use of Hebraistic literary forms cannot simply be attributed to Joseph Smith's familiarity with the English Bible." https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/why-are-there-hebraisms-in-the-book-of-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  40. Paul Y. Hoskisson, "Was Joseph Smith Smarter Than the Average Fourth Year Hebrew Student? Finding a Restoration-Significant Hebraism in Book of Mormon Isaiah," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 17 (2016): 151-158. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/was-joseph-smith-smarter-than-the-average-fourth-year-hebrew-student-finding-a-restoration-significant-hebraism-in-book-of-mormon-isaiah ↩︎

  41. S. Kent Brown, "What Is Isaiah Doing in First Nephi?" in From Jerusalem to Zarahemla (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1998), pp. 9-27. https://rsc.byu.edu/jerusalem-zarahemla/what-isaiah-doing-first-nephi-how-did-lehis-family-fare-so-far-home ↩︎

  42. John W. Welch, "Getting through Isaiah with the Help of the Nephite Prophetic View," in Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, ed. Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1998), pp. 19-45. ↩︎

  43. Robert A. Cloward, "Isaiah 29 and the Book of Mormon," in Isaiah in the Book of Mormon, ed. Donald W. Parry and John W. Welch (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1998). Identifies structural features of Nephi's Isaiah interpretation that parallel Dead Sea Scrolls pesharim, including systematic alternation between quoted text and interpretive commentary. ↩︎

  44. Matthew L. Bowen, "'For Their Good Have I Written Them': The Onomastic Allusivity and Literary Function of 2 Nephi 25:8," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 53 (2022): 77-90. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/for-their-good-have-i-written-them-the-onomastic-allusivity-and-literary-function-of-2-nephi-258 ↩︎

  45. Matthew L. Bowen, "'Upon All the Nations': The goyim in Nephi's Rendition of Isaiah 2 (2 Nephi 12) in Literary Context," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 67 (2025): 201-228. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/upon-all-the-nations-the-goyim-in-nephis-rendition-of-isaiah-2-2-nephi-12-in-literary-context ↩︎

  46. Joseph M. Spencer, A Word in Season: Isaiah's Reception in the Book of Mormon (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2023). Non-LDS-press peer-reviewed monograph examining how Isaiah is received and reinterpreted across the Book of Mormon by Abinadi, the resurrected Christ, and Nephi. Companion to Spencer's earlier The Vision of All: Twenty-Five Lectures on Isaiah in Nephi's Record (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2016). https://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/?id=p087639 ↩︎

  47. Joshua M. Sears, "Review: A Word in Season: Isaiah's Reception in the Book of Mormon by Joseph M. Spencer," BYU Studies Quarterly 63, no. 3 (2024). The leading LDS Hebrew Bible scholar's assessment of Spencer's monograph; provides current state-of-the-field summary. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol63/iss3/14/ ↩︎

  48. Noel B. Reynolds, "A Backstory for the Brass Plates," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 53 (2022): 199-254. Contains discussion of Orly Goldwasser's documentation of hieratic writing at Israelite locations. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/a-backstory-for-the-brass-plates/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  49. Evidence Central, "Brass Plates Consistencies." Documented 33 distinct internal claims about the brass plates maintained consistently throughout the Book of Mormon. https://scripturecentral.org/evidence/brass-plates-consistencies ↩︎

  50. Colby Townsend, "Returning to the Sources: Integrating Textual Criticism in the Study of Early Mormon Texts and History," Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies 10, no. 1 (2019): 58-85; "Early Nineteenth-Century Biblical Scholarship and the Production of The Book of Mormon," Journal of the Bible and its Reception 12, no. 1 (2025): 57-84. ↩︎

  51. Kent P. Jackson, "Adam Clarke and Isaiah in the Book of Mormon," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 66 (2025): 131-150. Examined all 11 proposed cases and found none persuasive. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/adam-clarke-and-isaiah-in-the-book-of-mormon ↩︎

  52. Thomas A. Wayment and Haley Wilson-Lemmon, "A Recovered Resource: The Use of Adam Clarke's Bible Commentary in Joseph Smith's Bible Translation," in Producing Ancient Scripture: Joseph Smith's Translation Projects, ed. Michael Hubbard MacKay, Mark Ashurst-McGee, and Brian M. Hauglid (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2020). The original published Adam Clarke claim regarding the JST. Wilson-Lemmon has explicitly stated that the work "cannot properly be called plagiarism." https://uofupress.com/books/producing-ancient-scripture/ ↩︎

  53. David P. Wright, "Isaiah in the Book of Mormon: Or Joseph Smith in Isaiah," in Dan Vogel and Brent Lee Metcalfe, eds., American Apocrypha: Essays on the Book of Mormon (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2002), 157-234. Also published as "Joseph Smith's Interpretation of Isaiah in the Book of Mormon," Dialogue 31, no. 4 (1998): 197-222. ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  54. John A. Tvedtnes, "Isaiah in the Bible and the Book of Mormon," FARMS Review 16, no. 2 (2004): 161-172. Response to Wright demonstrating that 59 Book of Mormon Isaiah variants are confirmed by ancient manuscripts. https://scripturecentral.org/archive/periodicals/journal-article/isaiah-bible-and-book-mormon ↩︎

  55. Joshua M. Sears, "Deutero-Isaiah in the Book of Mormon: Latter-day Saint Approaches," in They Shall Grow Together: The Bible in the Book of Mormon, ed. Charles Swift and Nicholas J. Frederick (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2022), pp. 365-392. https://rsc.byu.edu/they-shall-grow-together/deutero-isaiah-book-mormon ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

  56. Grant Hardy, Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader's Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). Hardy concedes: "Recent Isaiah scholarship has moved...in favor of seeing the book of Isaiah as the product of several centuries of intensive redaction." Further: "even chapters 1-39 underwent considerable revision and augmentation after 600 BCE." Calls dismissal of scholars who "don't believe in prophecy" an "inadequate (and inaccurate) response." ↩︎

  57. Daniel T. Ellsworth, "Their Imperfect Best: Isaianic Authorship from an LDS Perspective," Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship 27 (2017): 1-27. References Avi Hurvitz's finding that Deutero-Isaiah shows Classical Biblical Hebrew features; also notes Jeremiah's use of Isaiah 53 language. https://interpreterfoundation.org/journal/their-imperfect-best-isaianic-authorship-from-an-lds-perspective ↩︎ ↩︎

  58. Avraham Gileadi, "A Bifid Division of the Book of Isaiah" (PhD diss., BYU, 1981); The Literary Message of Isaiah (New York: Hebraeus Press, 1994). ↩︎

  59. L. Lamar Adams and Alvin C. Rencher, "A Computer Analysis of the Isaiah Authorship Problem," BYU Studies 15, no. 1 (1975). https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol15/iss1/7/ ↩︎

  60. Colby Townsend, "'The Robe of Righteousness': Exilic and Post-Exilic Isaiah in the Book of Mormon," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 55, no. 3 (2022). Identifies Trito-Isaiah influence in original Book of Mormon compositions, including the mediation of Isaiah 65:2 through Romans 10:21. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/the-robe-of-righteousness-exilic-and-post-exilic-isaiah-in-the-book-of-mormon/ ↩︎ ↩︎

  61. Townsend documents specific phrase-level overlap (not just thematic resonance), tracing the chain through specific Greek constructions in Pauline epistles. If a Book of Mormon author is using a Trito-Isaiah phrase as filtered through Paul's New Testament epistle, that indicates New Testament textual dependence in pre-Christian Nephite mouths, not merely Isaiah dependence. The Malachi precedent (3 Nephi 24-25, Jesus directly quoting Malachi to the Nephites) is differently situated: Malachi 3-4 is explicitly attributed within the Book of Mormon and the text is self-aware about the post-Lehi origin of the material, while the Romans 10:21-mediated phrases appear in Lehi's, Jacob's, and Nephi's mouths as their own composition without any narrative mechanism acknowledging post-Lehi origin. Approach 4 (divine intervention adding post-exilic content) covers the delivery of attributed post-Lehi scripture; it does not as cleanly cover unattributed post-Lehi phraseology in pre-Lehi authors' own narrative voice. ↩︎

  62. Stan Larson, "The Sermon on the Mount: What Its Textual Transformation Discloses Concerning the Historicity of the Book of Mormon," Trinity Journal 7, no. 1 (1986): 23-45. Larson identified eight Textus Receptus variants; the Book of Mormon follows the KJV/TR reading in seven cases but notably diverges at 3 Nephi 12:22 by omitting "without a cause" -- aligning with the earliest Greek manuscripts (P67, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus). ↩︎ ↩︎

  63. Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994), 11. Metzger concluded that "without a cause" (eike) was "much more likely that the word was added by copyists in order to soften the rigor of the precept, than omitted as unnecessary." ↩︎

  64. Daniel K. Judd and Allen W. Stoddard, "Adding and Taking Away 'Without a Cause' in Matthew 5:22," in How the New Testament Came to Be: The Thirty-Fifth Annual Sidney B. Sperry Symposium, ed. Kent P. Jackson and Frank F. Judd Jr. (Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center, 2006). The strongest LDS scholarly treatment of 3 Nephi 12:22's textually superior reading. Argues the omission directly affects doctrinal meaning. https://rsc.byu.edu/how-new-testament-came-be/adding-taking-away-without-cause-matthew-522 ↩︎

  65. John W. Welch, Illuminating the Sermon at the Temple and Sermon on the Mount (Provo, UT: FARMS, 1999), 310 pp. Welch documents that the great majority of 3 Nephi 12-14 is identical to Matthew 5-7 while substantial deletions and additions distinguish the two texts. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/mi/42/ ↩︎

  66. Nils Wilhelm Lund, Chiasmus in the New Testament: A Study in Formgeschichte (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1942). The systematic study of chiastic structures in biblical literature began with Lund, though earlier scholars (Jebb, Boys) had noticed the phenomenon in the 1820s without developing a full framework. John W. Welch, ed., Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis (Hildesheim: Gerstenberg, 1981). ↩︎

  67. Scripture Central KnoWhy #39, "Can Textual Studies Help Readers Understand the Isaiah Chapters in 2 Nephi?" Summarizes Skousen's eight key findings. https://scripturecentral.org/knowhy/can-textual-studies-help-readers-understand-the-isaiah-chapters-in-2-nephi ↩︎

  68. Lucy Mack Smith stated that Joseph "had never read the Bible through in his life" prior to the translation, consistent with the absence of any record of a family Bible serving as a constant household reference for him. Cited in FAIR, "KJV Italicized Text in the Book of Mormon." https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/answers/KJV_italicized_text_in_the_Book_of_Mormon ↩︎

  69. John W. Welch, "Timing the Translation of the Book of Mormon: 'Days [and Hours] Never to Be Forgotten,'" BYU Studies Quarterly 57, no. 4 (2018): 10-50. Welch concludes the translation occupied "57 to 63 available full-time working days." See also Welch's earlier overview in Opening the Heavens: Accounts of Divine Manifestations, 1820-1844, ed. John W. Welch, 2nd ed. (Provo, UT: BYU Studies, 2017). The dictation produced approximately 269,000 words with over 330 proper names maintained internally consistent and no substantive revisions. https://byustudies.byu.edu/article/timing-the-translation-of-the-book-of-mormon-days-and-hours-never-to-be-forgotten/ ↩︎ ↩︎

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